This is
an article about the
first annual Freedom Fest that happened in 1997and
reported in the Novemeber 1998 issue of Big Time Music Trade Magazine.

FREEDOM FEST

Maine Vocals did it again. Boosting a 1st annual event to aid
musicians in having a venue to perform at, while selling 500 tickets to
the general public. This event was held in Vienna, at Richard
"Nitro" Nystrom's farm. This site has the capacity to hold
2,500 -3,000
people. Don
Christian of Maine Vocals predicted that next years event will draw
1,000 plus individuals to attend. While Freedom Fest may not
attract the potential music industry big shots present, it has the
potential to, depending on how next years Hempstock does. If
the
bands who perform at Hempstock attract the attention of music industry
people, they might attend Freedom
Fest to take a second look at these same bands. To ensure a
confirmation, Totally different material needs to be
performed at
Freedom Fest, by the bands who performed at Hempstock. This
is
needed because not only would bands be seen as, "one trick ponies," if
they repeated the same material at both show; but the enthusiasm of the
crowd would be considerably less since they already saw the same show
weeks before. Freedom Fest can and will provide larger
audience
in the future if the town of Vienna's parking ban was
lifted. Freedom Fest could also provide larger audience
members
in the future if people knew before hand that they would not
listen to the same list of songs that they heard at Hempstock, but at a
different location. Granted creating original songs that can
compete on the national level is no small task. Then again, I
don't ask musicians: " Do you think Maine can become the next
music Mecca, " if I didn't think that the resourcefulness of
our
local bands didn't have it took to do this. Maine Vocals
provides
the land and the equipment, the musicians market their manufactured
product, and the music industry scouts are the customers. I
don't
dread that our that our musicians don't have the ambition to try their
very best at these dual tasks before next summer.
If the bands don't take this challenge to heart, then all future
opportunities of this state becoming a music Mecca will
vanish.
The objective is to have people there to listen to the bands, not party
with great background music. People will always show up at
Maine
Vocals events, but the kind of people there won't always be music
industry scouts if my words fall on deaf ears. This is not to
say
that the music at Freedom Fest was bad. Nothing could be
further
from the truth. The situation at Freedom Fest was the
competition. There were a lot of people who came into Vienna
from
out of state. People said they liked Freedom Fest better than
Hempstock for a reason, people were a lot more friendlier to each
other. When this is competing with bands, there ends up being
less people watching the bands. If the music was ground
breaking,
as in premiering new material to the public, then chances are, this
won't happen. A trained ear, who is taking a second look at
the
bands at Freedom Fest won't be there to meet the extremely friendly
people at the show, they are there to compare the two shows and watch
the audiences reaction. The thing was that the acoustics were
so
good, that people didn't have to be in front of the stage to hear the
music. There is a parking ban in Vienna that can stunt the
growth
of Freedom Fest. It might be beneficial for the town to lift
the
parking ban, to give the people a chance to see how nice of a place
Vienna is and the great view of the mountain range on Richard Nystroms
Farm. Granted the music industry does listen to tapes and
C.D.'s
before they sign bands up; but they also have to watch a band perform
live and chances are they would choose one of these events with more
people than a smaller club.